Registry is the name of Windows hierarchical database, that Windows uses to store options and configurations for a Microsoft Operating System.

The Windows Registry provides information about the settings for low-level operating system and applications running on the platforms. The kernel, user interface, device drivers, services, SAM and third party applications are some platforms which use the Window Registry.

To boost computers performance, the registry also gives a method to use counters.

At the time registry was first coupled with Windows 3.1, its main aim was to store information on configuration of components based on COM.

The use of registry was inflated with the launch of Windows 95 and Windows NT so as to organize the surplus of INI files per program, which had been used earlier to amass settings of configuration for Windows programs.

The Registry database has two essentials: keys and values.

Inside keys, Registry Values are stored and they actually represent name/data pairs.

Manipulation of registry values is carried out by the API functions of Windows, which access names of values discretely from their key paths and/or from Windows handle that acknowledges the parent key.

However, the terminology is misguiding to some extent, as values are identical to an associative array, where basic terminology would recognize the values name portion as a “key”.

Window 3s 16-bit registry presents the terms, wherein keys included merely a value that is unnamed (which required to be a string), but they couldnt have arbitrary duo of name/data.

The Windows registry can be edited in a manual way in MS Windows by executing regedt32.exe or regedit.exe in the directory of Windows.

This advantage could have serious consequences e.g. a slow computer if Registry editing is done carelessly. Thus, Microsoft recommends that before editing the Registry, backups should be performed to avoid damages. In fact, many industry experts like editors and authors of leading trade magazines have recommended this.

A direct implementation of the current registry tool was seen in Windows 3.x, known as the “Registration Editor” or “Registration Info Editor”.

It was mainly only an applications database that facilitates editing embedded OLE objects.

Here is the test of alertness as there are a lot of distinctions between the two editors available on these operating systems.

An integrated program of these two distinct programs was firstly seen in Windows XP. The operating system embraced the REGEDIT.EXE interface and infused the REGEDT32.EXE functionality into it.

With REGEDIT.EXE being the enhanced editor and the other one, i.e. REGEDT32.EXE, invoking the former one, there doesnt seem any difference on the newer operating systems including Windows XP.

The Registry Editor enables users to do the following functions easily:

• Importing and exporting .REG files, exporting data in the binary hive format
• Creating, manipulating, renaming and deleting registry keys, subkeys, values and value data
• Setting permissions based on ACLs (Windows NT-based systems only)
• Loading, manipulating and unloading registry hive format files (Windows NT-based systems only)
• Remotely editing the registry on another networked computer

Linux platform too allows for editing the registry with the assistance of an open source tool called Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.